Comedian Bio
Paul Hughes is from England, and has been performing
stand-up comedy since November 2016
Story
One of the most common questions stand-up comics are asked
is why they chose to perform comedy in the first instance. In a male-dominated
industry, many comedians who feign a genuine interest in the art- and may be
attempting to mask their sex-and-ego-driven impulses- may tell women that they
have always been a ‘class clown’. The reality is that most of us are united by an
absence of impulse control, personal tragedies, poor mental health, addictions
and self- destructive lifestyle choices, as much as we are by laughter.
However, I doubt there are many stand-ups living today who have taken as many
risks as I have with their physical health, sanity and lived to tell the tale.
I no longer feel that I have any dignity left to lose and I am working on that
basis henceforward. We should also remember that humour- particularly that
which is dark and morose like mine- can serve as defence mechanism against the
painful realities that life throws at us. In my case, it can also function as a
way of denying what a despicable person you have been- until some recent
epiphanies brought about by a near-death experience have coerced you into
staring in the mirror and facing the reality of the bastard man that stares
back at you. I should begin by saying that I only blame myself for the events
that I am about to describe. Yes, I have had enablers, but part of growing up
is acknowledging that you and you only are responsible for your own actions. I
have danced with the devil on many occasions. If the saying ‘what doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger’ rings true, then perhaps I can find some comfort in the
fact I have become a better person now. For every success story you may have
read about a Richard Pryor or Russell Brand, there are ample more people who
have taken similar paths in life and ended up in prison, in lunatic asylums or
in a coffin. I imagine a lot of the misery experienced by comedians in the
abysmal cycles of behaviour could be categorised under the wide umbrella of
love, sex and relationships. For reasons I am about to describe, I can
comfortably that some of these interlinked events could easily have been
deleted scenes from Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic masterpiece, Requiem for a
Dream. The fact I attended a single sex boys’ school was likely a contributor
to the opening chapters of the apocalyptic disaster that was my love life
between the ages of 12 and 20. We all had ways of coping with this dearth of
female contact. One friend of mine swapped his Nintendo Wii for a bag of
cocaine aged 13. Another aged 14 was given a restraining order by the local
girls’ school for his overzealous behaviour outside their school gates. As for
me, my coping mechanisms lay somewhere in between eating like a horse and
developing an unrequited love for pornography. As any average overweight
15-year-old with poor hygiene aspires to, I inevitably became something of a
‘porn connoisseur’- given my increasingly deep insight into the genre. As I
failed to realise at the time- in my autopilot state of mind of comfortably
watching drug addicts rub their genitals together in increasingly depraved
ways- but have come to realise since, porn was rewiring my brain in a rather
unhealthy way. Whilst I should have been out looking for a normal teenage girl
as a means through which to quench my sexual thirst, I instead lived in a
self-constructed fantasy that I could continue to sit in my bedroom and a
goddess with Double F breasts, perfect features and a golden tan would climb
through my window and provide me with world- class fellatio without any
questions asked. After hours of searching for the right video, I remember once
stumbling upon Paris Hilton’s sex tape ‘A Night in Paris’ and declining
Pornhub’s offer because her breasts were not sufficiently large for a porn
connoisseur like myself. A perfectly wise and rational position to hold I’m
sure readers will agree. I ought to have asked for a toffee hammer in the Christmas
of 2009 so that I could have chiselled my way out of the masturbation furnace I
had trapped myself inside. I imagine that during my teenage years, I produced
enough semen while looking at porn to have enabled a small African country to
thrive using only hydropower stations. Although there was a gaping void in love
life at this time, I did have considerable success in other areas of my life. I
had great friends and was consistently a straight-A student. Had I been able to
kick my habit of watching pornography every single night, I imagine that I
would have been a far happier teenager. I was not an entirely soulless creature
despite my self-destructive habit. After a long porn-aided session of
strangling my penis like I was Peter Sutcliffe and his last victim, I would
often have a therapeutic few hours wherein I would attempt to purify my soul
with some relaxing music. However, the rewiring pornography had done to my
brain became apparent when I once played an album on Spotify. The title read
back to me Born to Die by ‘Anal Del Ray’. By the time I arrived at university,
things were looking up. In the first week of Freshers (aged 18) I had
successfully performed a ‘normal’ social transaction which paid dividends of
being sucked off by a 21-year-old girl. I had gotten her back to my room on the
false pretence that I was fluent in German. Given that she spoke like her life
depended on reaching a verbal pace of 200-words-a-minute, I was able to get by
saying genau (I agree) at regular intervals. Once the dishwater-like alcoholic
spirits had transformed my brain into a beacon of Dutch courage, I also told
her that I had two brothers and liked to play football with my friends at the
weekend. (People of my Grandparents’ generation often crowbar into everyday
conversations the fact that had the Allies not won the war, we ‘would all be
speaking German’. I am inclined to disagree with this given the broken attempts
of most English people to speak in a foreign tongue. At best, if Nazi Germany
had conquered Great Britain, I would be speaking in a pigeon hybrid of
predominantly English with a sprinkle of Deutsch.) Nevertheless, this blowjob
was also engineered while I had a cocktail of vodka and vomit floating around
my tonsils. Nevertheless, it was a successful operation. She was from Moscow
and inevitably plenty of ‘From Russia with Love’ puns floated around my student
halls of residence like stale farts for the following three days. This was
until the spotlight shifted onto one unlucky lady who had slept with a different
boy every night of Freshers’ week. The fact that one of my best friends who
lived in the corridor opposite had fingered ‘Russia’ (reader insert your own
WW2 pun here) two days earlier was not enough to tarnish my newfound confidence
with women. A few weeks later I did meet a girl who I genuinely really liked.
In a similar vein to Romeo and Juliet’s meeting at a ball hosted by Lord
Capulet, I had always hoped to meet my first love in an equally extravagant
playground of romance and glamour. We therefore met at a bus stop in Hyde Park
in Leeds. We were both on the same pyjamas-themed pub-crawl. Black tie and
evening dress was not the order of the day. For a shy 18-year-old attempting to
chat up a confident 21-year-old, I was a surprisingly smooth operator. My words
came out particularly smoothly given that they were spoken in slurred, vibrato
tones courtesy of the 9 pints of lager I had consumed. We had spoken in
jigsaw-pieces of dialogue previously, but later came to converse uninterrupted
by other people or my nerves; which had sent the moving vehicle of our
conversation down a cul-de-sac, rather than the open crossroads I had hoped
for. Like all great love tales, the social catalyst for our mutually flying
sparks came just before midnight. Less moonlight romance, more drunk snog under
the blanket of industrial pollution of Leeds. Prior to this, she had saved me
from a dangerous character I had met at the bus stop. Very much in the style of
a third-wave feminist fairy-tale, the princess had been called in to rescue the
prince (or me in this case). Stood in my Primark dressing gown, I was
conversing with said mentalist (who went by the affectionate nickname of ‘DJ
Love Muscle’) about some areas of his life that should have screamed ‘Run away
now!’. But nine pints deep, I was walking on a tightrope without a circus net.
Ready to fall in the abysses of ‘Dutch courage’ and ‘downright stupidity’, I
fell from a great height with one foot in each state of mind as I carried on
this conversation with him despite said warning signs. This man informed me
that he was on day release after spending 10 years in prison for attempted
murder. I playfully suggested that he should have done the job properly if he
would have served a decade inside anyway. In a slow-motion avalanche of
ultraviolence (one which would have made Keanu Reeves in the Matrix look like a
quadriplegic Christopher Reeves), DJ Love Muscle showed me where on the temple
of my skull he had unsuccessfully tried to kill this man. He then proceeded to
show me pressure points on my body where he could take my strength away. Harry
Houdini with a darker past. The sight of me attempting to lift this man from
underneath his shoulders- while he clutched at pinpoint coordinates on my
wrists- must have surely been a peculiar one for any passers-by. The opening
fistfight in Fight Club outside the bar would have surely raised fewer
eyebrows. She must have seen this sight from across the darkened underpass
where the bus-stop lay and wondered if her drink had been spiked with hallucinogenic
drugs. She drunkenly stumbled across the road as I proceeded to tell her that
I’d invited him back to my place- to officially celebrate his release from
prison with a party of students. She humbly advised that my friendship with DJ
Love Muscle would have to end prematurely. I left this maniac to his own
devices and we headed back to the first-world concentration camp that was my
student halls. After checking his WhatsApp profile picture the following day,
it transpired that he was also a cross-dresser. I had considered his character
rather plain up until that point. Despite the perfect, picturesque start to our
relationship, things between her and I began to turn sour. I tried, and I tried
and I tried to quench my thirst. Like a horny corgi trying to mount Queen
Elizabeth II. But she would not give it up. She kept a proverbial padlock
chained around the bank vault that lay between her legs. No matter how
gentlemanly I was; no matter how interested I pretended to be in the most
bollocky and monotonous details of her life, we were not going further than
first base. Stephen Hawking would have crawled round a baseball field in faster
time. And it wasn’t just her boring life I had to hear about. I had to give
calm and considered advice to her friends- micromanaging their minor problems
like I was the manager of an Apple sweatshop dealing with Ming Ho’s headaches-
while Steve Jobs told me that I need to increase production in time for
Christmas. Suggesting structural improvements to Ellie’s piss-poor essay with
the same degree of seriousness a doctor would give their patient regarding a
terminal cancer diagnosis. All in a vain attempt to get laid. Robert De Niro’s
skin colour would have been indistinguishable from that of a Peruvian toad had
he witnessed the skill and precision involved in my acting. Ellie you owe me
that time back you cretin. This went on for months and felt like multiple life
cycles. During one of my lowest periods of desperation, I even agreed to watch
an episode of Glee with her in a last-ditch attempt to persuade her to gratify
my sexual urges. Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler circa 1938
paled into insignificance in comparison to this. After no more than ten
minutes, my agony became unbearable. I told her that my maternal Great
Grandfather had committed suicide due to shellshock following the Second World
War and that she should let her guard down so that my mother would not see her
son reach the same fate. No dice, however. In an effort escape the torturous
signals being tattooed onto my sex-starved cerebellum, I sought to exercise
military-tactics to escape this prison I found myself in. I randomly stumbled
upon a pertinent and somewhat heart-breaking story in a newspaper. Master of
puppets-style, it pulled on every heart string I had. I had finally found a
story that I could relate to. The headline read as follows: ‘Man gives up
masturbating for 700 days - and claims it gave him "superpowers”. I
thought: ‘this is golden- if I’m more of a man that I used to be she’s bound to
give it up’. However, I only lasted as-long-as 26 days. And it transpires that
having a wet dream so messy that she had to throw out her bedsheets does not
necessarily qualify as a superpower. Like a burst pipe at an oil distillery.
Less black gold, more cantankerous waves of spermatozoa. After this, I gave up.
I told her I couldn’t carry for another 4 months with someone who protected her
own virginity more closely than far-right conservatives protect the lives of
down-syndrome foetuses. Asides from the physical aspect of things, we did still
get on. So unsurprisingly, she was quite upset about this ‘break-up’. I was
rather crude in my choice of language as I left her bedroom. Inspired by lyrics
of my beloved Anal Del Ray, I told her she was prettier when she cried first
thing in the morning than she was with a full face of make-up on. I felt bad at
the time, of course I did. However, I later found out she had also cried during
an argument about the messiness of the kitchen the day before. Swings and roundabouts.
By the end of my second semester, the bulging veins in my ball sack were
reminiscent of those in Saddam’s Hussein face in the last moments of his
hanging. I’m sure the millions of Africans travelling on the Middle Passage
felt similarly aggrieved at the cruel denial of their basic human needs. Like
trying the struggle of trying to find a decent shirt in TK Maxx, I had somehow
managed to find a girl who ticked all my boxes. Lucy was- and still is- truly
gorgeous. But more importantly, she understands my sense of humour. She has a
good heart and a kind of shy innocence that I’ve always liked in girls. Lucy
was an angel in my eyes. And crucially, one without the scabbed wings of vanity
and ego. Even if she is timid at times, I’d take a girl like Lucy in a
heartbeat over the loud, degenerate nutcase- regardless of how beautiful she
may be. Sorry to crush your dreams, Lindsay Lohan. No fictional God will save
you from your own cheating heart. Sort yourself a bit and I’d take you home to
meet my mum, Miss Lohan (Mrs Hughes in a decade’s time, no doubt). In this
weird, wonderful and sometimes downright disturbing 21-year I have spent on
this Earth, I can count on one hand the number of love interests I’ve had who
have qualified as angels with unscabbed wings. And despite being from the
inbreeding-capital of the UK (Birmingham), I do in fact have five fingers and
not sixteen tumour-shaped stumps attached to my palm. Perhaps my pending
applications at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge further evidence the
breadth of the gene pool in my family. Either that, or I’m an incredibly
high-achieving invalid. Should I not see Lucy again, I expect that I may see
her on television one evening. As dramatic music floats in the background
(Barber’s Adagio for Strings would be perfect), David Attenborough will narrate
a heart-breaking montage about endangered species on this planet. Black and
white photographs of Lucy (and Layha, Kate, Mollie, and Louisa - you know who
you are) will float by like a French art film. An emotive appeal will be put
out to make sure beautiful women like them can continue to survive in spite of
the sniper bullets of sin and temptation that mankind might throw at them. I’ve
stumbled into car-crashes of pornography involving women having sex with
animals (posted by mentalists on Facebook) more often than I have found love
interests with these women. I’ve quite literally encountered more women having
sex with horses in cyberspace than I have with pretty faces and healthy minds
in real life. Bestiality firmly aside, our mutual enjoyment of each other’s
company blossomed week by week. Once I had overcome the initial seasickness of
speaking to her, our relationship sailed sweetly out to sea. We shared many
laughter-filled evenings, holding hands and laughing at the bands of
chimpanzees surrounding us at parties. One night everything fell perfectly into
place. Our Siamese twin third-wheels have finally left us alone. As I tried not
appear like an excited child on Christmas morning, there was an unspoken understanding
between us about what was coming. Something that is quite relevant to the story
is that I was under the influence of MDMA that night. Whether I had taken it
voluntary- or whether it had flown up my nose because of a sudden gust of wind
and a spilled bag on the floor- remains to be seen. But as should be common
knowledge to anyone with only half their head screwed on, drugs are bad for the
brain (m’kay). We headed back to my bedroom. I fancied her so much my penis
should have been stiffer than the digits of a corpse six hours deep into rigor
mortis. I might have well been a corpse. With this gloomy sense of existential
hanging over my head, I have never felt such a sledgehammer of a blow to my
manhood. This was like the Red Army Soldiers arriving in 1945 to liberate the
starving inmates at Auschwitz- only to discover they’d forgotten the wire
cutters. Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom only for the key to his cell to
break at the last second as the guards arrived to free him. Talk to Frank could
have walked through the door at the exact moment- as I crawled back under the
duvet like a broken little boy- and started filming a poignant anti-drug
commercial. My penis lay there like some worthless stillborn reptile for the
rest of the night. As she left the following morning, I felt the same sense of
shame and despair at my poor life decisions as the parents of the Columbine
Killers must have felt when they received that phone call from the Colorado
Springs Police Department. I hope this public exposure of my poor judgement
will serve as an effective apology to Lucy for that night. And more
importantly, my spiral into downright idiocy thereafter. You can find a better
man than a degenerate hedonist who opts for the chemical high rather than a
night spent with you. (For Lucy, the angel without scabbed wings).
